Monday, November 28, 2016

Open Access Journal: Classics@

Classics@,
edited by a team working for the Center for Hellenic Studies and
headed by Gregory Nagy and James O'Donnell, is designed to bring
contemporary classical scholarship to a wide audience on the World
Wide Web. Each issue will be dedicated to its own topic, often with
guest editors, for an in-depth exploration of important current
problems in the field of Classics. We hope that Classics@ will
appeal not only to professional classicists, but also to the
intellectually curious who are willing to enter the conversation in our
discipline. We hope that they find that classical scholarship engages
issues of great significance to a wide range of cultural and
scholarly concerns and does so in a rigorous and challenging way.

Each issue of Classics@ is meant to be not static but
dynamic, continuing to evolve with interaction from its readers as
participants. New issues will appear when the editors think there is
good material to offer. Often it will emphasize work done in and
through the Center for Hellenic Studies, but it will also call
attention to fresh and interesting work presented elsewhere on the
web. It stresses the importance of research-in-progress, encouraging
collegial debate (while discouraging polemics for the sake of
polemics) as well as the timely sharing of important new information.

Issue 13

Issue 13: Greek Poetry and Sport.
Many studies on Pindar, Homer, and other poets have discussed the
specific uses of sport in each context, and studies on Greek sport have
acknowledged the ways in which agonistic values and practices have been
reflected in poetic literature, but there has been no single collection
of studies devoted specifically to the intersection of Greek poetry and
sport. This volume includes a range of contributions that represent a
diversity of genres, periods, and approaches, which cut across strict
poetic genres, occasionally even mixing poetry and prose in their
approach. Poetry's interest in sport survived the rise and fall of
genres like epinikia and satyr plays, and the rise and fall of
myriad political and cultural changes in the Greek Mediterranean. We can
only speculate on the many and complex reasons for the grip of poetry
on sport and vice-versa, but they no doubt include Homeric
intertextuality, the universal appeal of the topic to the elite and the dêmos,
the universal presence of gymnasia and agonistic festivals (both
blending poetry and sport), and the agonistic resonances between poetry
and sport.

Issue 12

Issue 12: Comparative Approaches to India and Greece.
This issue contains papers by four scholars comparing specific literary
and cultural traditions in India and Greece. The papers served as the
basis of discussion at an event in February 2015 organized by the Center
for Hellenic Studies in association with the Embassy of India. The
discussion that took place among the scholars and guests on that
occasion, which began with summaries of the four papers, is included as
it was recorded. This is intended to be a starting point for further
discussion of the topics presented and of other topics suggested by the
nature and spirit of the event.

Issue 11

Issue 11: The Rhetoric of Abuse in Greek Literature.
This volume grew out of the need for a venue in which to engage
collaboratively on the topic of abuse. Abuse has of course been widely
studied, and in the last few years there has been a renewed interest in
abuse as a broader cultural and literary phenomenon, but there are
reasonable restrictions as to how it has been addressed. One goal of
this volume is to initiate a scholarly discussion that will allow
greater heterogeneity in the material covered and in the theoretical
models brought to bear on that material. Another is to encourage
experimentation and collaborative exchange among scholars working in
seemingly unconnected fields. Most importantly, perhaps, we would like
to foster a deeper understanding of the role of abuse in all of Greek
literature, across genres and time periods, through the kind of
cumulative knowledge that comes from collaborative work in different
fields.

Issue 10

Issue 10: Historical Poetics in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Greece: Essays in Honor of Lily Macrakis.
History needs art to give it form; art needs history to give it
resonance. This relationship of history and art is the theme of the
essays by distinguished international scholars collected in this volume.
Its publication celebrates the career and work of Professor Lily
Macrakis. She is an eminent chronicler of modern Greek history whose
seminal work, Venizelos: A Study in Cretan Leadership,
remains essential to an understanding of the most influential Greek
leader of the 20th century. Among her other accomplishments, Professor
Macrakis was president of The Modern Greek Studies Association from 1977
to 1979 and has been an influential figure in the organization since
its inception. Equally significant has been her role as a devoted
teacher of Greek history and culture to multitudes of students.
Professor Macrakis thus truly embodies the spirit and significance of
the articles presented in this Festschrift so fittingly dedicated to
her.

Issue 9

Issue 9: Defense Mechanisms in Interdisciplinary Approaches to Classical Studies and Beyond.
Nowadays people speak of “defense mechanisms” as both negative and
positive forms of behavior: examples of negative forms are denial,
repression, acting out, projection, rationalization,
intellectualization, while one of the few positive forms is assertion, a
way of responding that takes the middle ground between aggressive and
passive. In the spirit of this positive form of assertion and in both
technical and non-technical senses of the expression “defense
mechanisms,” the present issue of Classics@ has been given its title.
The aim is to publish online research papers and essays in Classics and
in other disciplines, related or unrelated, that explore strategies
where the primary purpose is to defend assertively rather than attack.
The justification is straightforward: discoveries and discovery
procedures in research require and deserve a reasoned defense.

Issue 8

Issue 7

Issue 7: Les femmes, le féminin et le politique après Nicole Loraux, Colloque de Paris (INHA), novembre 2007
is the result of a conference held in Paris (INHA, 15–17 November 2007)
which was co-organized by the Centre Louis Gernet (CNRS-EHESS), the
Équipe Phéacie (Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne and Université
Denis-Diderot Paris VII) and the Réseau National Interuniversitaire sur
le Genre (RING, Paris). The aim of the conference was to explore Nicole
Loraux’s legacy concerning the feminine and the polis both in Hellenic Studies and in feminist scholarship.

Issue 6

Issue 6: Reflecting on the Greek Epic Cycle
is the result of a conference held in Ancient Olympia on 9–10 July
2010, which was co-organized by the Center for Hellenic Studies (Harvard
University) and the Centre for the Study of Myth and Religion in Greek
and Roman Antiquity (University of Patras). The goal of the conference
was to explore problems concerning the surviving fragments of the Greek
Epic Cycle that have heretofore been neglected. Guest Editor: Efimia D.
Karakantza.

Issue 5

Issue 5: Proceedings of the Derveni Papyrus Conference
reflects a three-day symposium on the Derveni Papyrus hosted by the
Center for Hellenic Studies in July, 2008, on the occasion of the recent
publication of the edition by Theokritos Kouremenos, George M.
Parássoglou, and Kyriakos Tsantsanoglou (Florence, Olschki, 2006; the
text of the papyrus from that edition is available on this website here).
The symposium was an opportunity to gather scholars who in the course
of the past decades have been working on this text to address a set of
issues relating to the edition and integration of the papyrus, its
translation, and its interpretation.

Issue 4

Issue 4: The New Sappho on Old Age: Textual and Philosophical Issues
is the online edition of a print volume published by the Center for
Hellenic Studies in 2009 (available through Harvard University Press, here).
This volume is the first collection of essays in English devoted to
discussion of the newly-recovered Sappho poem and two other incomplete
texts on the same papyri. Containing eleven new essays by leading
scholars, it addresses a wide range of textual and philological issues
connected with the find. Using different approaches, the contributions
demonstrate how the "New Sappho" can be appreciated as a gracefully
spare poetic statement regarding the painful inevitability of death and
aging. Guest Editors: Ellen Greene and Marilyn B. Skinner.

Issue 2

Issue 2: Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Informatics.
The second issue of Classics@ is the first edition of an ongoing
project of publication aimed at documenting this emerging
sub-discipline of our field, the scholarship of creating, analyzing,
and disseminating humanist learning electronically. This issue
features articles describing these projects and others like them —
new work of high quality that is expanding the depth and breadth of
our field. It also looks back at the history of this sub-discipline,
and forward toward emerging standards, tools, and potentials.

The primary focus of the project is notice and comment on open access material relating to the ancient world, but I will also include other kinds of networked information as it comes available.

The ancient world is conceived here as it is at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, my academic home at the time AWOL was launched. That is, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Pacific, from the beginnings of human habitation to the late antique / early Islamic period.

AWOL is the successor to Abzu, a guide to networked open access data relevant to the study and public presentation of the Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean world, founded at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago in 1994. Together they represent the longest sustained effort to map the development of open digital scholarship in any discipline.